Nationalities and taste? (see details)

Spicy food.
Sweet candy.

I don’t think my nationality influenced my tastes at all.

My nationality has a lot of fried/fattenning foods. Sweets are highly regarded.

I doubt it is nationality, and more like what you’re used to. Whatever you’ve grown up eating is probably what you grow to know and like. If that includes ethnic cuisine, that is just circumstantial.. not genetic. I’m guessing.

There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between having a specific nationality. It boils down to a matter of, well, taste. If anything, there seems to be more of a pattern of people’s taste buds changing over time. For example, I used to have a sweet tooth and couldn’t go a day without a candy bar. Today, sweets hold little interest.

My nationality does not have anything to do with my taste. In fact, I despise Big Macs and other fast “food” (I use that term loosely) atrocities.

I like all of it unless it tastes like dirty cardboard. Spicy/mild/sweet/sour, etc…. I like it all. I’m a food junkie. I don’t think it has anything to do with my nationality though.

Sour candy rules. I love sour Skittles. I’m also in love with spicy food of any kind. I have no idea what that has to do with my nationality, or how it influenced it. I’m French, but I don’t like frog legs. Just tastes like really tasteless chicken or that fake crab shit. Love snails though, especially with melted cheese on them.
I really can’t say how my nationality plays into my food tastes though.

I think when it comes to someone’s preferred tastes, the only relation to that with nationality is what might be abundant or popular where you are, but even that doesn’t have much to say with what a person likes or dislikes.

@Symbeline Warheads are the shit.

@Michael_Huntington Never heard of those, but I looked em up. I want some. And what a cool looking candy lol.

@Michael_Huntington gosh those make me cry! Sourest candy ever @Symbeline .

On a more serious note, do you guys think your childhood influenced your tastes? Have your tastes changed a lot over your life?

Really I’ve no preference, I enjoy sweet and sour, spicy and mild, pretty equally though if you’re going to force me I’d say I lean towards spicy and since I tolerate it well and it’s not always easy (but getting easier) to find “authentically” seasoned ethnic food so I indulge when it’s available; yes, yes, that’s more of a personal and regional thing than strictly ethnic.

I don’t think my nationality or ancestry affected it so much as my travel and resulting exposure to a very wide variety of foods, particularly asian, at a young age.

Have my tastes changed a lot over my life? I’d say they haven’t changed as much as they’ve grown, there’s a handful of things I liked more when I was younger and don’t really care for now, but now there’s a much broader range of things I consider myself as liking/interested in.

Spicy food culture, raised by a Korean mother who was kinda lathered food in what my friends equate to molten lava.

I like both sweet and sour candy, I lived a good part of my life near citrus bearing plants so anything citrus sour is fine by me. But at the same time I like sweets like chocolate and have combined sour citrus with bittersweet chocolate.

I have learned to try anything once, and so far I have found something in every culture’s food that I like. I have also found something in every culture that I would prefer not to eat again. I also tend to lean towards the spicey more than mild, sweet or sour.

It is basically a fact that tastes vary by country, and even region, especially large countries like America. Campbell’s tomato soup is different one country to another, they purposely alter it for the specific market. Nestle chocolates. Drinks are marketed differently with different flavors. I don’t think it is some sort of genetic thing based on nationality, but rather what we are accustomed to in our own countries. Even restaurants, or I should say immigrant restaurant owners alter their menu to Americanize to the flavors Americans expect here.

I like sweet candy, both spicy and mild food.

Part French, and, no, I don’t think so. I like to sample it all and am all over the board when it comes to taste (sweet savoury).

There is a great variety in national and regional cuisines around the world and I suppose it is a matter of what you are used to, what other cuisines you have been exposed to and individual taste as to how comfortable you are straying outside the kinds of foods you are used to. I like all sorts of different kinds of foods.

The cuisines of my nationality backgrounds tend to be bland except for the Polish grandfather I never met. However, my mom was a great experimenter in the kitchen and I grew up with very flavorful food. She made pizza before pizza was available in this country. (She was not Italian.) The crust was an inch thick, but the sauce, cheese and toppings were just like you can get them now. I continued that tradition and my kids out do me. We like spicy and unusual (in most US homes) meals.

I’m a little white American girl who was raised in Las Vegas. I like both sweet candy, sour candy, very spicy food and some mild food.

I was a terribly picky eater as a child. I put ketchup on everything. I didn’t acquire a taste for a wider selection of food until I became pregnant with my first son. That was 20 years ago. I’ll try almost anything now.

@jonsblond You grew up in Las Vegas? I was a very sheltered little white American girl too and then I went away to college and I met a girl in my dorm who was from Las Vegas. That was an incredible revelation to me. People come from Las Vegas?!?!? I thought people only went to Las Vegas. LOL.

@JLeslie Well, now I want an international sampling of Campbell’s tomato soup.

@Supacase I seem to remember it is a different recipe for Canada than America, but not sure I have the country right? It might be true for other countries also.

All food. All candy. No.

@Supacase I couldn’t find info on the soup, but this talks about how Latin Americans like sweets. Also, recently I saw a report on a new drink being launched by Nestle for the Latin American market and they talked about flavor preferances in different markets.

@JLeslie it is not hard to believe, even McDonalds changes their menus from country to country to accomodate the local taste preferences. I used to drive to Canada when I lived near the border to get vinegar with my fries.

@WestRiverrat Exactly. That’s a good example too.

Yes on the candy but I prefer dark chocolate. Spicy on the food but only up to the point where it enhances the flavor. I am not into heat for heats sake. Nationalitywise…..... don’t think and English upbringing would favor spicy but the texan in me would so go figure.

Probably not… I grew up eating boring stuff like boil-in-bag rice, spaghetti with jar pasta sauce and nothing else, and dry, overcooked boneless skinless chicken breasts. Now I’m a really adventurous eater and I love spicy foods.

British: Fish & chips please.

I believe I like things based on my heredity. For instance, my maternal grandfather is from Tennessee and I pretty much like all things from that region: Whiskey, chicken gizzards, and sweet potato pie just to name a few. My paternal grandparents are from Germany and I love wursts, dark beer, cabbage kraut, rouladen and saurbraten. I doubt it’s inbred, it’s probably just the way we were raised.

@Sueanne_Tremendous I think you contradicted yourself, although your use of inbred is odd to me, I use the word to mean born from related parents. You said you think your taste is genetic/hereditary at first, then you said later you doubt it is inbred, which I guess you mean you doubt it is genetic?

I mean if I were adopted I would probably be most interested in the foods my adopted parents gave to me. By heredity I mean my grandparents/parents heritage dictated what we ate and therefore it’s what I like. I like Mexican food just fine and dandy but I like southern and German food better. had I been raised by Mexicans even with my German heritage I assume I’d prefer mexican food. Sorry…never graduated college so I might be mixing up heredity, heritage and inbred. Yes, I doubt it’s genetic as far was what I prefer but I do believe that I have higher tolerances for whiskey and beer cause I can damn near drink them like water with little effect. But give me tequila and watch my clothes fall off. Also, I seem to process foods from my heritage (or whatever) better. I don’t get gas from kraut and I can eat fried foods ( like okra and chicken) like no tomorrow (within reason) but
my weight and cholesterol are ok. I have no clue if any of this makes sense, it’s just what I have observed in my many years of eating. So, the long and short of it: I think I would prefer by taste the foods I was raised on but I also think that my body would handle foods of my heritage better.

@Sueanne_Tremendous Heredity has to do with genetics, not national or cultural heritage. Inbred is usually used referring to born from related parents or incest, but inbred can be used to mean innate or born with the trait, but I rarely hear it used that way.

I understand what you meant to say now.

Doesn’t matter if you have a college degree. Look them up in the dictionary for better clarification. I have learned all sorts of new vocabulary words here in fluther.

I love sour sweets but tend to prefer milder foods. I like a bit of spice every so often but not so it makes my eyes water! I am English and I suppose our traditional dishes tend to be mild rather than spicy but seeing as the Indian takeaway seems to be as much the norm in Britain as a roast dinner, I don’t really feel my nationality has much to do with it.

I like sweets and spicy foods, oddly in my native country there is not a lot of spicy food and the sweets aren’t usually that sweet. The primary food used there is corn and I despise corn!

@lillycoyote When we traveled out of state I was often asked by other children if my dad worked at a casino or if we lived in one of the casinos. I guess you would have been one of those children. ;)

@jonsblond LOL. Yes, I think I would have been one of those children. :-).

I am of Scottish and Welsh decent, and, I like EVERYTHING!
Good old hardy european draft horse stock, I have to be really sick to go off my feed. lol

The only 3 things I do not like, okay, make it 4…are cooked spinach, pickled beets, seaweed and fruitcake.